AMD launches new Radeon RX 580 variants

AMD seems to changing things up a bit for their graphics products in several markets. The company has quietly added several graphics cards for sale in Asia, and has also made changes to include support for these cards in their Radeon Software graphics drivers. The new models are the Radeon RX 570G, RX 580G, and the RX 580 2048SP. These cards seem to be a bit odd, so let’s try make sense of this.

Radeon RX 580 family

GPU

Shaders

Base/Boost clock

Texture units

ROPs

TDP

RX 580 XTR (8GB)

2304

1257/1340MHz

144

32

185W

RX 580 (4GB, 8GB)

2304

1257/1340MHz

144

32

185W

RX 580 V2 (8GB)

2304

?

?

?

?

RX 580G (8GB)

?

?

?

?

?

RX 580 2048SP

2048

1168/1284MHz

128

32

150W

RX 580X OEM (8GB)

2304

1257/1340MHz

144

32

185W

AMD’s RX 580 family is quite large for a mid-range GPU, and there are several variants out in the market today. The RX 580 is the original version of the chip, shipping with either 4GB or 8GB of GDDR5 memory, and a full set of shaders, texture units, and raster operators, as well as a 185W thermal design point (TDP). In the months that followed, two additional variants surfaced, with the RX 580X being an OEM-only version of the card with otherwise identical performance, and the RX 580 XTR being a slightly better binned version of the RX 580 die. There is speculation that the RX 580 die is actually cut down, and that the full design has the same 2560 shaders and 160 TMUs as the GPU in the Xbox One X console.

Thanks to a new product page that was updated on AMD’s China website, as well as new entries in the Radeon Software 18.10 drivers, there are three more variants of the same die. The RX 580 V2 is a new version of the original GPU die. The appearance of this new card in AMD’s drivers has been expected as there have been rumours of a Polaris refresh, moving the family to a new designation called “Polaris 30”. There are no specifications or revised clock speeds for this chip yet, and its only appearance so far is in AMD’s drivers. This might be an RX 580 die built on the slightly better 12nm process from Global Foundries.

The other cards are a little interesting. The RX 580 2048SP appeared briefly on AMD China’s website before the product page was fixed, but it listed an RX 580 with 256 shaders cut from the die, turning it into a slightly faster Radeon RX 570 with higher clock speeds. As it turns out, this might be a rebadged Radeon RX 570X, which was previously an OEM-only card. There are already product listings for GPUs for sale on JD.com that use this GPU, and the first partner to ship them is China-based Dataland. TechpowerUp also lists two Sapphire cards that use the same die, but those models aren’t confirmed yet.

The final variant is the RX 580G, along with the RX 570G that accompanies it. There isn’t any information about these cards anywhere except in the aforementioned driver leak, although the use of the “G” moniker is interesting. Previously, a G-series Radeon GPU was integrated into the motherboard, and AMD’s 700 series chipsets used Radeon 3000 and 4000 series GPUs to enable on-board display outputs. They weren’t great, but you could play games on them (and cook an egg, and set your board on fire if you tried to overclock it). There was also the Radeon HD 7000 G-series of GPUs used for laptops, the very last of the Terascale 3 generation even though they were sharing the same HD 7000 series badge as first-generation GCN.

If – and this is a big if – AMD is making G-series GPUs, I think it’s they’re very likely going to be the desktop cards in an MXM form factor for small-form-factor machines. ASRock already makes the DeskMini GTX/RX, which uses MXM cards from NVIDIA to enable full-throttle desktop-class performance in a tiny, tiny chassis. If that’s the case, then we should also be open to the possibility of a Ryzen-based DeskMini as well, seeing as ASRock is buddy-buddy with AMD’s gaming graphics division now.

Recent comments

Important stuff

Contact us

If you'd like to speak to someone about placing an advertisement on this website, email sales[at]nag[dot]co[dot]za.
Any concerns, complaints, compliments, bug-reports, or general word-speaking with regards to the website can be sent to webmaster[at]nag[dot]co[dot]za.